Living Behind a Mask, by Evelyn Stillwell

Her legs quivered as she stood in front of them, groping her now grotesque face, staring down what would now be the rest of her existence. Rejection. Despair. Was it fate for her to go on like this until her day of reckoning came? Or would God open a crack in the Earth, separating her from humanity?

For her, life was now a dark, never-ending comedy. Comments and incessant insults forever twisting the knife deeper into her blackened heart; stinging her skin like a thousand needles.

All of this for one night. For a few hours. For a few laughs. Now she has all the laughs she’ll ever want while the tears of a young girl stain the face of a monster.